


Lord of the Rings: The Fifth Age

by Ether_Echoes



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Action/Adventure, Amused Gandalf, Blue Wizards - Freeform, Female Gandalf, Gen, Like a thousand years after the end of The Return of the King, Set in the future, The Arkenstone is Bad News, The ainur can adopt a variety of forms anyway, Using the earlier version of the Legendarium where the Blue Wizards failed in their appointed tasks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:07:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29594631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ether_Echoes/pseuds/Ether_Echoes
Summary: A thousand years after the demise of Sauron, the world has moved on. Minas Tirith is now a sprawling metropolis, and the relics of the past gather dust in museums. Vashti Arhun, a young Easterling whose parents immigrated to the city many years ago, has long escaped the drudgery of her service job by studying the magical past. Long has she admired the heroes of the tale, whether they be as great as Gandalf the White or as humble as Samwise Gamgee. Her friends like to poke fun at her, reminding her that magic and wonder has largely left the world, and she is forced to admit that they are right. When she becomes embroiled in a battle at the Royal Gondor Museum of History between her hero Gandalf and one of the Blue Wizards, though, she steps up in a way she'd never believed possible, and finds herself dragged into a journey the likes of which she has only dreamed of.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Lord of the Rings: The Fifth Age

In the mountainous shadow of Minas Tirith, Vashti tucked herself into a little coffee shop and opened a dog-eared copy of her favorite book: There and Back Again. Out the window, the metropolis sprawled for miles outside the gates of the old city, and down below a plaza had been erected around two mounds, one green and verdant and the other dead and dark.

“‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,’“ a singsong voice chirped, and Vashti looked up to find her friend Ivoriel climbing into the seat across from her, a short and stubby woman with her brown hair tucked up under a beanie and a large coffee in hand. “I hate that book, well and truly. Every day at work, without fail, someone asks me if I’m a hobbit or a dwarf, or references that book, and the only thing to do is smile and shake my head. I’ve never read a single page in my life, but I feel like I could recite the whole damned thing from memory. I blame the movie.”

“I can’t help it. I find it really comforting, especially when I’ve had a rough day.” Vashti turned a page, her marginalia crowding the words. She had an unblemished collector’s edition at her apartment with full-color illustrations, so she felt free to mark up her spare copies with her thoughts at the time, related to the text or not. “A thousand years vanished into the west, and Bilbo Baggins can still transport me back to his time and place.”

“I should hope not. We’re standing on the grounds the Easterlings were driven back, as you see fit to remind me constantly. Somehow, it doesn’t seem like they’d be all that tolerant of your existence, Vash, race- or gender-wise.” She took a sip and checked messages on her phone. “Besides, it’s all exaggerated anyway. Everyone knows that.”

Vashti fought the urge to remind her that the main action against the Easterlings had been a quarter-mile away. It never helped. “Ivoriel, Smaug’s teeth are on display at the Royal Gondor Museum right now. They literally are as big and strong as swords!” She checked her smartwatch. “Or, at least, they will be in two hours and twenty-three minutes.”

“Shouldn’t you go now to get tickets? Running a little late.”

“I’ve got a lifetime membership.”

“Of course you do.” Ivoriel snickered, glancing out the window at the towering layer cake of the old city. “You know, I don’t know if you’ve ever told me why you spend so much time studying that old stuff, Vash. It often feels like you do it to the point distraction. If your background was from Gondor, I might even worry that you were getting a little too invested in the so-called glorious past, if you know what I mean.”

Marking her place, Vashti frowned at the carved wooden relief over the table depicting oliphants bearing down on Rohirrim horsemen. “Don’t worry, I’m not turning ultra-nationalist on you. It’s not about Gondor or anywhere in specific. It’s just… My parents came here from Rhûn after the war with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and they did their best to give me and my brother the best lives we could have. I’m grateful, I really am, but my life doesn’t…” Vashti considered her words through a sip of coffee. “I try to live like I should, but I feel… empty. Tired. I look around and ask where all the magic went from the world, stuff that felt meaningful and powerful, it and I wonder how it could be.

“I’m glad that women have the right to vote, that we have decent healthcare, and so on, but those people asking you about dwarves don’t talk about how there are hardly any left, if at all with how reclusive they are. The last dragons are corpses adorning museums, the last elves faded and left, the ents are silent, dead, or vanished, and the only reminders we have that the world was anything other than what it is today are a few scattered bits and pieces. Arda just doesn’t feel as alive as it should. The events in this book really, actually happened, but today a trip from Hobbiton to Dale is a couple hours’ flight and none of it runs into trolls, goblins, shapeshifters, spiders, nor elves.”

Vashti sighed, checking her phone. “Whenever I think about the last market crash or political scandal or petty war, I read and study the old stories and feel a little better thinking about how maybe the magic could come back. Like, if Olórin–”

“Who?”

Her cheeks flushed. “Gandalf’s real name. Like, whenever I feel like exercise and dieting isn’t worth it, I keep it up thinking that, if Gandalf ever called for aid, I’d be ready to respond just like the Fellowship did. He’s basically my hero.”

“Aside from the hobbits, all of them were literally superhuman, you know. Aragorn and arguably Boromir had the blood of Numenor, Legolas was a Sindarin elf, and Gimli was a dwarven warrior. You’re from the East; ain’t no Numenorians out there.”

“Guess you have been listening to me. It’s a spiritual condition, not a bloodline one,” Vashti muttered defensively, but her cheeks were red. “The hobbits all did incredible things anyway. Sometimes, the least of us can have the greatest impact, Ivory.”

Ivoriel rolled her eyes and grinned, slurping her coffee down. “If that’s the case, then maybe I’ll save the world by throwing some jewelry into Mount Doom. If a country nobleman and his gardener can get up there, surely a barista can manage it. Gondorians with dwarfism have to be at least on par with hobbits.”

“That’s the spirit.” Vashti laughed, but it was tinged with strain. “Actually, I think I’m going to go early. I need to think, and the line is going to be stretched across the entire sixth level. It’s the treasury of Erebor on display, after all.”

“Sure. Take care.”

Tucking her book into her pocket, Vashti took the stairs outside the coffee shop at a jog rather than use the elevator that had just opened. It warmed her up in the brisk air of a Gondor winter.

The gravestone at the two mounds caught her eye. A plaque in modern Westron a few paces away translated the lettering, but Vashti could read Old Westron and the dead Rohirric tongue just as well: Faithful servant yet master’s bane, Lightfoot’s foal, swift Snowmane. No gravestone marked the neighboring mound of the Fellbeast where nothing grew but thorns, and in Vashti’s mind nothing needed to, but there were cigarette butts and broken bottles that had yet to be cleaned on it. People walked by without looking up, as though a twisted monster hadn’t been laid to rest mere meters away after killing a king.

Few people – or the worst people, as Ivoriel had pointed out – seemed to care that they were treading on ground that ghosts had swept over like a grim tide, that every new building foundation planted between there and the borough of Osgiliath dug up such a volume of orcish bones and armor that they were worthless trash even to collectors, fit only to rust in the archives of archaeology departments the world round.

In a way, Vashti couldn’t blame them. It was a violent age in many ways, and what was bright and beautiful about it hardly seemed worth the cost. Contemplating how the wonder had all faded and gone brought no one happiness, least of all her.

Yet, for a while, at least, she could dream.

* * *

Vashti had been wrong about the line. It barely stretched out the doors and down a single block, let alone down the entire level. Minas Tirith’s chill could be brutal up near the top of the Old City, and she rubbed her hands together as she waited her turn behind parents with families and school groups. Banners promised the wonders of Erebor all down the street, depicting Smaug’s fury, blocky dwarven armor, glittering treasure, and, the crowning piece, the long-unseated Throne of the King Under the Mountain.

“Knew I’d be seeing you again and soon as we opened,” the receptionist chuckled as Vashti scanned her phone with the barcodes for her pass and event ticket. Unlike Ivoriel, the tiny woman was an actual curly-haired, bare-footed hobbit. An open-faced sandwich big enough for three sat open beside her. “You’re here more than the actual researchers, staring at these dusty old relics like they’re gonna lead you to Valinor.”

Vashti laughed nervously. “Yeah, I do be like that. Can’t help it. You all do such a good job bringing them to life.”

“Well! We do appreciate your patronage, Ms. Arhun.”

The Royal Museum’s polished, ancient tiles split off into three wings. Vashti normally haunted the History of the Third Age wing to the left, the right being the Natural History wing and the center normally playing host to various collections of art and more modern pieces. The Erebor Collection had briefly conquered the center that day, a thought that leapt to mind as she looked up at the somewhat gaudy ¼-scale Smaug that loomed over the entrance hall. Then again, seeing the way the kids ahead of her stared up enraptured at the display, and she had to admit that, even in miniature, she wouldn’t have wanted to face anything like the plastic living tank before her with naught but a bow.

Full sets of blocky dwarvish armor lined the entryway past the doors, six on either side with cases displaying the personal effects of the dwarves who had signed to the mission to retake the mountain, with King Thorin’s crowned thirteenth set standing proud in the back with a replica of his great oaken shield beside it.

“Is that really his sword?” a pale Gondorian boy asked, pressing as close as he dared to the glass for a better look at the curved blade, still shiny despite being thousands of years old. “Orc-wrist?”

“It’s probably just a replica,” his mother demurred, gripping tight his hand to keep him from flying off. “They wouldn’t put the real one here.”

“Actually,” Vashti said, stepping forward, “it’s the real Orcrist. You can tell by the way the light shines off the blade – see how it has just a faint sparkle to it? Even today we can’t do with steel what the elves of Gondolin could thousands of years ago.”

At the woman’s bewildered expression, Vashti offered a shy smile. “It also says so on the plaque.”

While the mother tugged off her child, another woman closer to Vashti in age stepped forward for a better look. This one wore a plain white sweater over an athletic frame, her dark hair braided back, and when she smiled her eyes lit up. “That was pretty impressive. Do you work in the field?”

“Me?” Vashti laughed weakly. “No. I never went to college, so they refused my application.” Realizing how pathetic that sounded, she cleared her throat. “I’m just an enthusiast. The Glamdring hanging – sorry, Gandalf’s sword – they have hanging in the history wing is a fake, and I got used to telling the difference. No one ever really says for sure what happened to it. I mean, presumably Olórin took it with him when he sailed west, but why would an Istari need a weapon in the Undying Lands? I know he took the Ring of Fire, Narya, but it’s not like he would be wearing the same body or…” She trailed off, her cheeks darkening further with every sentence. “I’m sorry, I’m rambling. I have a tendency to do that.”

“I followed you well enough.” She looked at Vashti with a piercing gaze that made her feel transparent, as seen as she ever had been. “That’s all very knowledgeable, but does that knowledge serve you well? This is all very beautiful, and the stories these pieces tell are important ones, but you sound more like a woman drowning than someone who is just enthusiastic about her interests.”

Vashti couldn’t speak. It was like her throat had swollen to completely block her throat, and it took a lot of swallowing to clear it as she looked at the strange woman more thoroughly. “I don’t really have a lot going in my life,” she said quietly.

“I apologize if that was presumptuous.” The woman offered her a small smile. “Don’t mind me; I’m something of an enthusiast myself.” Looking around at the displays, the woman rested her hands in her sweater pockets. “To me, these exhibits are alive, and seeing the loving way the curators brought them here is a reminder that the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past. I think if you take joy in that, there’s nothing wrong with it, but while I enjoy reminiscing on what was, I think it’s important that we make our own stories in the here and now.”

She flashed Vashti a big smile. “See? Now I, too, am guilty of rambling, thus absolving you.”

“You say it with a lot more confidence and eloquence than I do.” Vashti glanced at her shyly past her own hair. “I guess if I were to put it into words, then I would say that what I really want to see, to experience, is magic. I want to feel something that’s elevated over mundane drudgery. I’ve, ah, collected a lot of spells in the tongues of Men, elves, and dwarves, but I’ve never gotten any of it to work in a really noticeable way. I think if I could experience that, I would feel happy.”

“You don’t need that to be happy, and if the old stories are any measure then you’re approaching it the wrong way. Don’t think of magic as something you do for yourself – think of it as something you do for others.” She checked an old analog watch on her wrist. “I’ve got to go, but it was nice meeting you.”

“You, too.” Vashti rocked on her heels, cursing herself for not having asked for a phone number or social media handle, and continued through the museum. With genuine admiration, she took in the bones of Smaug dredged from the lake, but the stranger’s words stuck with her through the entire tour.

Like most of the growing crowds, she ended her tour at the stout Throne of the King Under the Mountain. On its back glittered the Arkenstone with a light not quite that of their world, and it drew every eye effortlessly. Vashti had never been tempted to steal anything in her life, but the stone seemed almost to call to her.

“I thought it was buried with Thorin Oakenshield?” a young man said to his friend.

“Durin VIII had it recovered in an effort to consolidate power, I think,” his companion said. “Slotted it up there after people questioned his legitimacy. Unsurprisingly, busting into a tomb didn’t really help it much, but he held onto power for a century anyway.”

When the thronging tourists turned up, though, she quit the tour and escaped back to her comforting haunt of the History of the Third Age wing to think.

There, taking refuge amid the relics of the past, Vashti acknowledged the irony of doing exactly what the woman had suggested wasn’t healthy while her words churned in her head. Sitting on a bench and looking up at the delicate crown left behind by Queen Arwen. Once possessed of an immortal form, she’d surrendered it to dwell with King Aragorn, and so died not long after him.

It made her consider that, perhaps, she was being too frivolous with her own much more limited time on Arda. It would be possible to cut back expenses and go to community college, maybe even a local university, and change her circumstances if she was determined and lucky. Rotting in a tomb of the mind didn’t have to be her fate.

It took her a long, long time to work through her jumbled thoughts, during which the crowds ebbed and stragglers no longer filtered through the wing. Used to the security guards interrupting her reverie to ask her to leave, she only checked her phone late to find that she’d overstayed closing by ten minutes.

A frown crept up her features as she looked up and around. The museum was as silent and still as most of its exhibits, and she could see no sign of the night guards or janitor who normally did their rounds by then. Padding softly between the shapes of petrified trolls, she made her way towards the entrance.

“Kenelm?” she called softly as she went, her voice echoing lightly. “Bryson? Belethor? Come on, guys, if this is a prank, I’m sorry for whatever I did.”

A clatter made her jump, hand to her chest, and she turned to find one of the night guards, the old Gondorian Belethor, sprawled on the stone with his white hair stark beneath a light, his cap a foot away.

Ice crept up her veins. Worried that he might have had an attack, she hurried over and pressed her fingers up against his wrist to check his pulse. It throbbed steadily if quickly against her fingertips, which was a relief since she didn’t remember all that much first aid. Even so, she turned him into the recovery position and grabbed his radio, hoping to call for help.

Before she could speak, though, a loud curse broke the near silence, bouncing between the armored mannequins. “Damned thing near took my finger off!”

“Idiot,” a cool, clear voice said. “Try the drill.”

Vashti’s fingers went stiff with fear as it dawned on her what was happening. She clicked the radio. “Hello?”

No answer came, and a moment later a loud shriek of machinery against stone followed, sparks leaping from the throne down the hall and illuminating the figures of a small group of men. Vashti dialed emergency services on her phone, shaking.

“Minas Tirith guard, what is your emergency?”

She dropped it with a clatter, and quickly picked it up, whispering, “There’s a robbery at the Royal Gondor Museum of History! Hurry!”

“Did you hear that?” another voice called, just loud enough for the acoustics to carry.

“Just the drill, man,” another said, too loud.

The cold voice cut through their chatter, ringing with command. “See to it, now.”

Not knowing what possessed her, Vashti grabbed Belethor’s gun from his belt and rose to her feet. She’d visited a gun range with her brother exactly once, and she remembered the right grip and the safety, but that didn’t help her fear. Still, a strange anger welled up in her, and when a roughly dressed, pale-skinned man of Dale approached she had the courage to keep it fixed center mass. “Freeze!” she shouted.

Whether or not she actually could pull the trigger was another matter.

Four men stood at or near the throne. The one who held a drill to the chair was an Easterling like her, and it seemed as though the bit had worn itself on the metal casing without a scratch to show for it. The other two rough men bore the pale skin and hair of the West, but the fourth defied categorization. He was old, with thick white hair tinged with darker threads, but somehow as hale as a man a quarter his age. His navy suit was clean and crisp in contrast to the road-worn leather and patched denim the others sported, and something about that tickled her memory, particularly when he turned and she noticed the smooth, curved staff he bore.

Terror seized her alongside understanding, and she turned the gun on him at once.

“Stop!” he commanded, and a weight like she’d never known fell over her thoughts. Like a truck, the man’s sheer will crushed the breath from her, leaving her paralyzed. She could sooner have tunneled through stone than squeezed her finger enough to fire. With a gesture, he tore it from her hands, and it didn’t even have the decency to misfire and hit one of them.

The rough men laughed. “That was a stupid move,” the man of Dale said, coming towards her and drawing a heavy knife. “You’re going to regret that.”

Vashti could scarcely think beneath the numbing pressure in her mind, let alone experience regret, but the man in the blue suit gestured imperiously. “Stay your murderous impulses, my savage companion. This one is something of a scholar, it seems.” The intensity of the force grew as his eyes focused on her, like a troll rummaging through her head. “Come,” he commanded.

Vashti wanted to resist, she wanted to spit in his eye and defy him, but she couldn’t muster the energy to defy his words. Her feet shuffled towards him, her eyes fixed on the floor.

“You know who I am, don’t you?” His finger pushed her head up, her eyes swimming with tears of pain and frustration.

“Alatar,” she gasped painfully, “or Pallando, who can even tell the difference? You’re the… blue wizards who… failed your–”

She screamed in agony as his attention turned sharp, her vision going white as he tightened his mental grip.

“There are words on this crude edifice,” he said in a low, cruel voice, seemingly taking no satisfaction from the torment he inflicted. “Tell me what they say, and why it resists our efforts.”

Bafflement blunted the pain for a moment, and she looked up at him. “You don’t know Khuzdul, the dwarvish tongue…?”

“It never occurred for me to bother,” the wizard said dryly. “Now, woman.”

“It’s… mythril. You’re not getting through that with… even diamond bits. A wizard should… know better.” She panted, gazing up at the throne with its shining stone, its light illuminating runes marked around the casement. She wanted to dissemble, to put him off with false clues until the Guard could arrive, but it was like his mind filled every corner of hers with piercing light. “Durin VIII added it. It’s like the… Doors of Durin, at M-Moria.” The lack of comprehension on his face disgusted her enough that his control wavered briefly. An immortal who didn’t know history; the very idea revolted her. “You speak… the command phrase… I tried to do it with my apartment door, but I’m no elf or dwarf craftswoman, so I just ended up needing someone to come knock my door out–”

“Just, the command,” he hissed through his teeth, patience fast fading. “No excuses!”

Fingers and toes curling with a fresh wave of agony, like screws tightening on her knuckles, Vashti twisted and cried out, “It’s a paean to the line of dwarven kings, but the response is missing! Ogriff thamar da Khazâd Thrummaz eron nogaak Az, barak thamar Mer Nir hu Zeldar!”

With a ringing that echoed through the hall, the mithril snapped open, leaving the shining stone revealed. Vashti was left to fall gasping to the floor, forgotten, as the men whooped. The blue wizard reached in and removed it, his eyes reflecting the shining jewel with avarice so absolute it seemed to swallow the jewel whole.

“Haven’t you shamed yourself enough, Alatar?” a familiar voice called. All eyes had been upon the Arkenstone, but as they wheeled around the men cried out as a pale, shining light blinded them. In its wake came the woman from before, leaping in with ferocious speed and striking a man across the face with a white staff. He spun around, blood splattering across the throne, and fell gasping like a sack of grain. The second man was run through by a sparkling mithril blade, and the third found his gun bursting into flames the moment he pulled it. He shrieked, falling to his knees as he clutched at his burned hand.

Alatar lifted his staff, and a wave of unseen power repulsed the woman before she could finish him, too. She held her stance, eyes ablaze with righteous fury, and the air shuddered with their combined wills. “Olórin? Is that you, old friend? My, it’s been a minute, as the youth say these days. How fares Gandalf the Gray in this new century?”

She grinned fiercely. “The White now.” With tremendous effort, she shoved her staff forward, and Alatar was bowled back, smashing through glass displaying the armor of Bolg, war-leader of the orcs at the Battle of Five Armies. “I’m doing fine, thanks for asking. You broke Oromë’s heart, I hope you know.”

Clutching the Arkenstone to his chest, Alatar pushed back to his feet with blood staining his suit. “I aspire to more than being a lapdog of the Valar! You may have overcome Curumo, but I’ve kept myself busy these last few thousand years.”

The two of them battled over the stone, arcs of flashing light erupting from the sheer impact of their blows. Vashti was left reeling herself, both from the aftermath of her torment and the revelation of the woman’s identity. With desperate breaths, she sat up and looked around. Two of the men had gone down hard, but the Easterling with the burned hand fumbled for the gun of one of his fellows with the other. Lashing out with her foot, she struck him in the face hard enough to snap his neck around and drop him, and she gave him a few more kicks for good measure. Panting, she fished the gun out herself and turned, bracing against the back of the throne as Alatar and Olórin circled back around. Taking aim at Alatar’s back, she squeezed the trigger.

The gun barked in her hands and Alatar cried out as the bullet passed through his shoulder. It could have been a better shot if she weren’t in the shape she was in, but it was enough for Olórin to blast him back. “That’s enough, Alatar! Surrender, and I’ll take you back home. The Valar will be harsh, but fair, and there will be a way forward for you.”

Staggered but undaunted, Alatar struck his staff against the leg of a massive statue of an armored dwarf, its body scarred with dragonfire. He shouted a command, and the stone creaked and split with light. “This isn’t over,” he spat acidly, and took off towards the back exit. Olórin made to follow, but the broken statue groaned and tilted over, falling towards the throne. Vashti, still out of breath, tried to crawl out of the way, but it was too big, falling too fast, and she couldn’t muster the energy.

A hand seized her and one of the injured men in harm’s way and, with remarkable strength, yanked both of them free just as it collapsed and smashed the throne into chips of stone.

Vashti clung to her savior, panting from shock as much as anything, and rose shakily to her feet with her help. “Oh my God…” She pushed back her sweat-stained hair, dust puffing up from the motion. “Did all of that… did that all really happen?”

“It did.” Olórin turned her head at the sound of shouting from the entrance. “Come,” she ordered, taking her wrist and leading her towards the back exits. “I’m in no mood to try and explain myself out of an interrogation cell.”

Stumbling after her, Vashti put a lid on the bubbling morass of thoughts and questions that threatened to spill out of her at any moment. There she was, being dragged along by her personal hero after witnessing a battle of two angelic figures straight from the history she’d so adored, and it was all she could do not to babble at her like a child.

The Guard had not mobilized in force, sending only what sounded like a handful of squad cars, and so they were able to slip out the back, down a darkened cobblestone alley, and out onto a separate street entirely without harassment. They paused just short, allowing Vashti to catch her breath beside a trash bin with her hands on her knees. “What… why was a blue wizard stealing the… Arkenstone?”

Olórin slid her blade - Glamdring, of course - into a large case along with her staff and hitched them crosswise onto her shoulder. “It’s my responsibility, really, more than anyone’s. I thought committing it to the earth alongside Thorin’s body would have been sufficient, but of course greed will out.” She smoothed back stray hairs and placed a hand to Vashti’s back. “Stand up straight, take deep breaths. What’s your name?”

She did, meeting her striking blue eyes. “Vashti,” she said after a deep breath. “Vashti Arhun. I…” She bit her lip. “Thank you. If it weren't for you, I'd be dead now.” She pressed her face into her hands and brushed her hair back, taking a deep breath. “Nice new body, by the way. Why did you pick it, if you don't mind my asking? Wouldn't, ah, your old one get more respect given that you were a hero of the war and all?”

“And more attention at a time when my enemies are more connected than ever. Besides, I was tired of spending centuries pretending to be an old man. Neither form really resemble my true body, but a change can be nice now and again.”

“Fair enough.” She sighed. “It was stupid of me to get involved. Now he’s… he’s got it, and he never would have if I’d just kept back.”

“Ah, ah – did I not just say that it was my responsibility, Vashti? Try to keep perspective.” She smiled warmly. “You tried to do something brave. A little foolish, maybe, but isn’t bravery always a little bit of a fool’s endeavor? I can hardly blame you for sussing out some self-aggrandizing dwarf king’s riddle that, frankly, either of my wayward colleagues should have been fully capable of working out on their own. I suppose if they weren’t addicted to easy solutions, neither of us would be here, and let that be the final word in the matter: it was they who chose this violence, not we.”

Nodding, Vashti straightened and swallowed. “Fair enough. But, why would they care about a jewel like that, unless…?” She glanced away. “The Valar set one to be a star in the sky, and Maglor cast one into the sea, while Maedhros threw himself and his into a fiery pit.” Her eyes widened. “It couldn’t be… one of the Silmarils? But it didn’t burn his hands! They’re not supposed to be gathered again until the final battle, aren’t they? Oh, God.”

“I don’t think Dagor Dagorath is in the offing, if that’s what you’re worried about. No, I think this is merely the naked ambition of my former friends.” She clapped a hand on her back. “Come on. Let’s get some coffee and discuss what our next steps are going to be.”

“Wait, me?” Vashti asked, trotting after her nervously. “I’m not – I wouldn’t know the first thing about any of this! I certainly can’t fight.”

“Really?” Olórin glanced her way with a small smile. “Didn’t you put a bullet into an Istari’s back a few minutes ago?”

Oh, Valar, my fingerprints are probably all over that gun…”

“They are, but I wouldn’t worry. I’ll see to that when I have a chance to prove my identity to the royal family.” She pushed her way into a small coffee shop built out of the side of a public building, the glow from its doors shining out into the street. “I am the last person to recommend that you put yourself in harm’s way to right a wrong, Vashti, but I’ve had a feeling ever since I met you that you would if you had the chance. You proved your worthiness back there, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe it was ill-advised, but we can work on that.”

Vashti opened her mouth to argue, but she really couldn’t. She wanted to say that she was afraid, but hadn’t Frodo and his friends been absolutely terrified when they’d volunteered to join the Fellowship? With her hand resting on the glass door, she knew she could walk away, could thank her hero for saving her and return to a peaceful life and there wouldn’t be even a hint of reproach.

But she stepped in anyway and followed Olórin to the counter to order some coffee. Perhaps it was a foolish thing to do, but every great journey started with a foolish step out into the unknown.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fun little thing to write. I've never been, like, a massive LotR fan, but I've gone a lot deeper in it than most, and it's cute being able to drag a lot of this stuff in.
> 
> The basic plot of this story came from a dream, and it took some work to make it viable within the narrative. For instance, my dreaming mind forgot that Thorin was buried with the Arkenstone, so I had to insert a little bit of made-up history to account for it, but I don't think this should necessarily be treated as if it could stand completely within canon by itself. It rejects the notion that it was our modern world that emerges from Arda, after all, though I know Tolkien himself believed that it was a kind of different universe (though he had a far more eloquent way of putting it than I ever could.) I try to use canon as a springboard rather than as a straitjacket, and so while I feel like all of these elements can be derived from canon, they are in many cases a kind of elevated fanon, and where things go from here could vary considerably. I will, among other things, try to keep within the boundaries established by the books regarding the practice of magic as well. Certainly there won't be anything like we might see in War of the North, where orc sorcerers deploy magical force fields. There are some really interesting articles about this I could dig up.


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